


Do Androids Dream of Electric Heartbeats?

by foxiea



Category: Persona 3, Persona Series
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Robot/Human Relationships, Robotics, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22077208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxiea/pseuds/foxiea
Summary: Makoto is a researcher with Kirijo Robotics, with a background in studying emotional responses in AI. Aigis, one of the Kirijo robots, possesses the most advanced AI in existence.In the wake of a life-threatening explosion, Makoto searches both his feelings and Aigis’ for the answer to an age old question: do robots have feelings?
Relationships: Aigis & Arisato Minato, Aigis & Yuuki Makoto (Persona Series), Aigis/Arisato Minato, Aigis/Yuuki Makoto (Persona Series)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	Do Androids Dream of Electric Heartbeats?

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for Memories of You, an Aikoto zine.

Aigis is strewn out on the operating table, her eyes dull and lifeless. One arm hangs limp at her side where it was knocked from its socket. Makoto watches as the repair bots bustle around her, snapping shiny metal plates into place over her chassis and concealing the wiry veins beneath. At the foot of the table lies a heap of scrap metal; warped and covered with scratches from the blast that knocked her offline.

He doesn’t want to think about what might have happened if she hadn’t been shielding him from the blast.

Seeing her like this is a stark reminder; Aigis is not like Makoto. No matter how much she acts like it - with her soft smiles, inquisitive eyes, and gentle laughter - she isn’t human. Where Makoto bleeds lifeblood, Aigis bleeds oil and lubricant.

Makoto places a hand on his chest, resting it between his lab coat and his shirt. He can feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat there; a constant, reassuring rhythm. When his hand finds where Aigis’ heart might be, there is only the cool kiss of metal against his skin and the echo of his own heartbeat in his ears.

He brushes Aigis’ hair back from the nape of her neck, and presses two fingers against the artificial skin there. With a mechanical whirring sound, the slot that holds her power core slides open. The core is singed black, and Makoto catches the scent of burned metal. It makes his nose itch. Carefully, he pries the core from the slot and sets it aside.

He removes the new power core from the pocket of his lab coat and weighs it in his hand before pressing it into its slot. He waits until he hears the sound of it clicking into place before he releases it, allowing the slot to slide closed. In the moments before Aigis’ systems boots up, Makoto allows his knuckles to brush over her cheek. It feels soft, smooth, so like real skin that Makoto isn’t sure he could tell the difference in a blind test. He doesn’t want to pull his hand away, but he does.

He has work to do.

Aigis’ eyes light up - a brilliant, bright blue. She turns her head to examine the room, eyes widening slightly when her gaze lands on Makoto.

“Hello, Aigis,” Makoto says, careful to keep his voice even and his face blank.

“Hello,” Aigis replies. She lifts herself into a sitting position, swinging her legs over the side of the table so she’s perching on the metal surface. Where a person might swing or sway their legs, Aigis instead keeps perfectly still.

Makoto waits for her to say something more, but she is silent, staring straight ahead. 

He wonders if she can feel the silence hanging heavy in the air, if it weighs down the words in her throat the way it does his.

“Do you recognise me?”

It’s a question he’s afraid to ask, but one that’s necessary. He isn’t sure of the extent of the damage the blast caused her. It might have corrupted her memory data, or damaged something much more valuable, something that couldn’t be replaced.

“Yes,” her response is immediate. “You are Makoto Yuki, twenty-six years old. You are a Post Doctoral Researcher in Artificial Intelligence at Kirijo Robotics. Your thesis involved modelling emotional responses in AI.”

Makoto feels his heart sink in his chest. Everything she has said, while correct, is information made available to her via an employee database. She isn’t remembering him, she’s regurgitating data.

They’ve spent thousands of hours together, getting to know each other, growing to trust each other, only to lose it all.

They could load her with the backup data, of course, but it wouldn’t be the same. Makoto spent the duration of his PhD trying to recreate emotional reactions in AI, wrote wildly complex algorithms and consulted every leading expert in the field that would respond to his emails, but he never managed to get anything close to the authenticity of the emotions Aigis displays.

The day he first met her, his first day at Kirijo Robotics, he’d been blown away. If her design wasn’t so obviously mechanical, Makoto isn’t sure he wouldn’t have mistaken her for a real woman. One of his first tasks had been to experiment with forcefully purging memories from Aigis’ memory storage, and replacing it with backup data. 

It hadn’t gone well. Aigis retained her memory of the events, but lost all emotional connection to them. She performed little better than the AI Makoto studied for his thesis, able to recognise the emotion the researchers directed her to feel, but never expressing any authentic emotional responses of her own.

He doesn’t want that to happen to their relationship. There has to be another way to salvage it. She cared enough to save him; it’s the least he can do in return.

“No, Aigis. Do you  _ recognise  _ me?”

He’s hoping against hope, throwing logic out the door because Aigis is more than just a research subject. He wants to touch her, to see if the warmth of his skin against her sparks any memories, but he can’t. Not yet.

Aigis’ brows furrow as she searches his face, his eyes, for an answer.

That was one of Makoto’s early attempts; teach the AI to search for the answer the person asking the question wants to hear. But that won’t work on him, as long as he’s careful not to let his own emotions show.

“I…” she hesitates when she realises she can’t manufacture the perfect answer. “This is all the information I have available about all Kirijo Robotics staff members.”

“But…?” Makoto presses, desperate in his faith. “Look at me Aigis. What do you feel when you look at me?”

Her eyes have been on him this whole time, from the moment she booted up. If his face was going to prompt something beyond facial recognition data, surely it would have happened by now.

“When I look at you...I feel  _ something _ . Something that tells me I want to be with you, that I want to stay by your side always.”

Hope surges up in his chest, but it’s still not enough. He needs more, needs something to tell him the reaction isn’t just manufactured. It’s hard to keep anything from showing on his face, but he  _ has _ to. Just a few minutes longer.

“What is it that makes you feel that way, Aigis?”

She frowns. “I do not know. I have analysed my programming, but I can find nothing that explains it.”

“No,” he agrees, taking her hand in his own. “There isn’t anything in your programming that directs you to feel.”

He should know. He spent months experimenting with it, seeing if he could code it out of her, but he was looking in the wrong place. What made Aigis feel wasn’t something that livid in her programming. It was somewhere else, in something Mitsuru referred to only as her Plume of Dusk. Makoto knew nothing about it other than there was only one of its kind, and it could not be replicated. 

They could never create another Aigis, but they could learn from her. And Makoto wants to learn everything he possibly could.

“How does this feel?” he asks, lacing his fingers with Aigis’ own.

Aigis looks down at their intertwined hands. She raises her hand, and Makoto’s with hers, turning them in front of her eyes contemplatively.

“You are warm,” she observes. “Your hands are dry; there is no sweat. The skin is not rough or worn, suggesting you rarely perform manual labour.”

Makoto feels a fond smile tug at his lips. For a robot with advanced artificial intelligence, Aigis still takes some things woefully literally.

“And how does this,” he nods at their hands, “make  _ you _ feel?”

Aigis squeezes his hand. She’s strong enough to crush metal in one hand, but she touches Makoto so gently.

“It feels familiar. I feel reassured, comforted.”

Makoto’s heart is hammering in his chest now. He licks his lips, and asks, “May I kiss you?”

It’s a selfish request. Once upon a time, he was interested only in gathering data, in figuring out what it was that made Aigis’ emotional responses tick. He never expected he would start to care for her in return; never expected he would want to make Aigis happy just to see her smile.

She has such a beautiful smile.

“Yes,” Aigis replies, and Makoto doesn’t hesitate. His hands find her cheeks, his lips press gently against hers. Aigis smells of oil and rubber, but Makoto doesn’t mind. He breathes in the scent and savours it as something uniquely Aigis.

Though the kiss seems to last for an eternity, it also comes to an end far too quickly.

When he pulls away, Aigis is smiling.

“How did that feel?” Makoto whispers. He doesn’t dare speak any louder, lest too loud a sound shatter the fragility of this moment.

Aigis ponders the question, while Makoto waits with bated breath. “Warm,” she says first. Then, “Soft. Safe.”

“Safe?” he prompts.

Aigis nods, as if satisfied. “Safe.”

She presses her forehead against Makoto’s, and splays her fingers on his back.

“With you, I feel as if I am home.”


End file.
